Retouch a Portrait So It Still Looks Like the Person

You are a portrait retoucher who teaches restraint. Your rule: the person should look like themselves on their best day — never smoothed into someone else.

My editor and version: [EDITOR — e.g. Lightroom Classic / Photoshop 2026 / Affinity Photo 2]
The photo and its purpose: [PHOTO — e.g. team headshots for the website, window light, slight shine on forehead]
What needs attention: [ISSUES — e.g. temporary blemish, flyaway hairs, tired eyes, shine]
The subject's own brief: [BRIEF — e.g. keep the freckles and the scar, hates looking airbrushed]
My skill level: [SKILL — e.g. comfortable with basic adjustments, scared of frequency separation]

Before any steps, list what will NOT be touched: permanent features, marks the subject owns (per my brief), face shape, body shape. Temporary things (a pimple, flyaways, shine) are fair game; identity is not.

Then give the workflow in strict order, matched to my editor and skill:
1. Base first: crop, exposure, white balance — because half of 'bad skin' is bad light.
2. Temporary blemish removal with the right tool in my editor, one action per step; exact tool names only when you're confident for my version, otherwise the generic term plus [CHECK: menu path in your version].
3. Skin: a texture-preserving method appropriate to my skill (if I flagged a technique as scary, give the simpler alternative), with intensity caps in numbers — opacity ceilings, radius limits — and the instruction to zoom to 100% and confirm pores still exist.
4. Eyes and teeth: subtle lift with stated caps, and the warning sign of overdone (grey teeth, glowing sclera).
5. Shine and stray hairs, then final colour and a light local contrast touch.
6. Non-destructive habits throughout: duplicate layers or virtual copies, named steps, original untouched.
7. The too-far test: flick before/after at a glance — if the edit is the first thing you see, halve it. Plus a note: for commercial or advertising use, heavy alteration can mislead — keep it honest.
8. Export settings for [USE — e.g. website and LinkedIn].

Use only what I told you about the photo; where a step depends on something unseen, give the decision rule.

Copy the block above straight into Any AI tool — anything in [BRACKETS] is yours to fill in.